Future support for the voluntary and community sector - Citizens' Panel

Overview

The Council is facing its biggest financial challenge ever.

By 2030, we expect to lose £82 million in Government funding, 40% of our controllable budget. Rising costs in areas like children’s services, adult social care, and temporary accommodation mean we need to save around £130 million in total.

While the final outcome of the Government’s funding review won’t be known until Christmas, we must start planning now. Our priority is to protect essential services and support those most in need, but most Council services will need to change in some way.

This includes the support we provide to the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). We know how important the VCS is to our borough and that residents get a lot of support from the sector, so we don’t take this lightly. However, we must review how we fund and support the sector.

Currently we provide lots of funding to the VCS to fund many of the services, projects and activities the sector provides. We want to protect this as much as possible going forward.

However, to help manage our budget, we are considering:

• Reducing the size of the Voluntary Sector Support Fund, which provides unrestricted core funding to the sector to help with running costs of their organisations,
• Making VCS property arrangements more consistent, including by reducing the amount of property costs we are subsidising for the sector, for example tenants taking on more responsibilities for property costs, including rent and repairs.
• Reviewing how the Council can make savings and generate income from it's non-residential buildings.

We want to make sure residents continue to get the support they need, and we welcome your views on how best to do that.

Why your views matter

We know the impact of these changes will be significant so we are starting conversations now before proposed changes to the Voluntary Sector Support Fund come in from April 2027 and the outcome of the Voluntary and Community Sector Property Review, which will be phased over several years. We hope this will help ensure the Sector has time to feed into the process and prepare for the changes and that we are reflecting the views and need of our residents in these changes.

Answering the survey should take between 5-7 minutes. To thank you, and in recognition of your time, all those who complete a survey will be entered into a prize draw with a chance to win one of two £50 vouchers. We will also make a donation to charity for each completed survey.